BBC iPlayer on the Mac – First Impressions

Late last week it was announced that the downloading version of the BBC’s iPlayer was available as a trial version for the Mac. iPlayer is the gateway to the BBC’s video-on-demand catch-up service, where programmes are made available, in most cases, for about a week after initial broadcast. After it’s initial Windows XP-only launch a couple of years ago, support for Mac users (and those of other non-XP platforms) had been added through an on-line, Flash-based version. (There was also a QuickTime-based version made available for the iPhone which was also on-line only. I do love the way the BBC’s so quick to jump on every passing bandwagon.) Although this is a fairly standard solution for providing TV over the Internet, it meant you could only watch while you had a connection. So no EastEnders on the 7:21 to work for you, unless you’re running XP.

The main stumbling block was the BBC’s wish to DRM the shows, and the lack of a suitable cross-platform standard to implement it. (And I’m not going to even go near that argument.) The new iPlayer uses Adobe’s Air, which is basically a stand-alone version of Flash. As Anthony Rose notes on the BBC’s Internet blog, it’s no surprise that this version of the iPlayer was released on the same day as Air v1.5, the first version to support media DRM.

Getting the iPlayer to work was a bit of a chore. After a couple of days of messing around and getting nothing but this annoying grey barber’s pole, I finally worked out where I was going wrong. Your first step — something which they don’t mention anywhere on the BBC site and which the Air installer doesn’t check for — is to make sure you have Flash 10 installed. (I was still using 9.) Next, get and install the Adobe Air runtime. Then go to the BBC iPlayer labs page and sign up for the trial — which is simply a matter of clicking the big pink button. Now when you browse the iPlayer site you should find a “Download” button below your chosen programme. Clicking this the first time takes you to the screen where the iPlayer install should proceed as normal.

Show downloads are generally pretty fast, with this 130Mb file arriving in under 5 minutes. This is a massive improvement over my earlier experiences with the XP software, and is probably down to a move to direct downloads, away from the previously-employed peer-to-peer method, where speeds suffered when only a few other users were seeding a particular show.

The iPlayer app itself isn’t particularly Mac-like in design, but that’s only to be expected due to it’s cross-platform nature. For instance, the main window is resizable, despite not showing the control in the bottom righthand corner. Video and sound quality is generally pretty good.

(Here we see Dr. Ashen’s uncredited appearance as Noseybonk on last week’s Screenwipe, recreating one of the many childhood nightmares induced by kid’s TV show Jigsaw. Jigsaw, with it’s combination of puzzle games and masked psycho, was latter to be remade by Hollywood as the Saw movies.)

In all, this version of the iPlayer shows a lot of promise, doing everything it needs to. The web-based Flash version is still likely to prove the most useful for quick catch-up sessions — especially if, like me, you live at your keyboard — but if you have the foresight to stock up on shows it will probably be invaluable for trips away. It will also be interesting to see whether the Boxee people will be able to bring this version of it to the AppleTV, to allow viewing on the bigger screen.

Finally, since we’re on the subject, I’ll mention that all of the iPlayer services are only available to viewers browsing from UK IP addresses. Which is how things should be. It’s just a shame that you can’t register for the service while in the UK — maybe providing your Licence Fee number and postcode as proof you’ve already paid for these programmes — and then be allowed to access it from overseas. Anyone up for a writing campaign?